Understanding what the top 10 sites have done to obtain their rankings is critical. Not knowing this information is like running a business with your eyes closed!

Sites are judged on two key elements, links and content. You need to find out how many links each site has and how many pages each site has. You can do this manually or by using the software application under the "Exclusive Tools" tab above.

Automatically: (Recommended)

Save yourself some time and simply enter any keyword or search phrase into the software I have developed. The software will analyse the top 10 sites on Google, and neatly display the results for pages and links. Click here to see the software in action.

Manually:

To find the total number of links pointing to a site visit Yahoo and type in the query below. I recommend Yahoo as Google doesn't display all the results.

link:http://www.anysite.com

To find the total number of pages visit Google and enter the following query.

site:http://www.anysite.com

What To Do Next?

Once you have this information you need to decide whether or not you can compete with them and over what period of time.

For example:

If a site has 120 links and 200 pages you may wish to add 10 new links per month, and 15 or so pages. Competing at this rate would take you a little over a year to achieve a top 10 ranking. I personally don't recommend adding more than 50 links per month, but feel free to add as many pages as needed. Obviously all pages must have value to a visitor but even 1 a day gets you over 350 per year - more than enough in most cases!

Getting links may sound like a daunting task too but it really isn't. Get more information by reading the "How To Increase Traffic With Links" article.

See, doing research is pretty simple, search engine optimization is not as scary as some "gurus" would have you believe. Remember that if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!

Source: StartsRanking